Recently I’ve been messing around with FE6 and I’ve realized something, FE6 has super cool balista.
First they are stationary meaning you can’t drive them while this does sound less fun I’d argue it’s much the opposite, being stationary means that you are restricted however they don’t need to be mounted so you can move at any point not being unable to move or act the same turn you leave the balista, you can even use your weapons while on the balista tile.
Being stationary means that it’s easier to place them in maps without making the player able to cheese the map, further more they can be placed in locations without having to wall them off or placed in annoying to reach places such as surrounded by trees.
They can also be placed to give the player advantage if they steal them the bridge map in vanilla FE6 is a good example, taking the balista in that map allows you to fight the generic wyverns easier and weaken the cavs while not making Flear a joke.
This is also why FE6 has more impactful and better balanced balista, Being sationary they can be put in key spots without needing to make awkward areas on the map or make use of the balista redundant, there is a reason long and killer balista are not used in FE7 and 8, it’s not because it’s bad design to have these threats or tools it’s that moving weapons with 15 range and high crit are far too frustrating in enemy hands/powerful in player hands, in fact it seems IS realized how bad moving balista were as they appear only 4 times in FE8, and was never used after that again.
FE6 Balista use a map tile to be placed which is quite interesting, while it requires some knowledge they can still be placed anywhere if you know how to make new tiles in builder, as a side note these tile/terrain types are still in FE8 and I assume FE7 however if used in 8 [and I assume 7] the functionality is absent, It’d be interesting to see if the FE6 terrain Balista function could be re-enabled somehow.
Or at least making FE7/8 Balista stationary without the hoops of awkward terrain placement FE7/8 require.
I want to clarify there isn’t any comment on Balista classes that is a whole different discussion this post is purely about the GBA map object balistas.
One of the biggest issues with mobile Ballista is more of a FE7 problem, where the effective bonus is only x2. In the western releases, this pretty much reduced the effectiveness of Archers/Snipers. There’s a few maps in FE7 where Ballista’s are placed in situations where it’s more advantageous for the player to use than the enemy, where making them stationary would already nerf Archers/Snipers. But without x3 damage, it makes them underwhelming to use. But even with that, as map objectives they’re placed in spots where players can actually use them. FE7 may have x2 effectiveness, but out of the GBA games it lets you actually use the Ballista the most, and you can argue uses them more effectively thanks to being able to move them.
In FE8, well the issue is that you’re given only three chapters Chapters 7, 10, & 13, with 10 & 13 only being available on Eirika’s route. As map objectives, they’re fumbled hard, because there basically little reason to actually go for them, as they can just waste time just getting to them.
Since we have access to tools like FEBuilder now, I think design around FE7/FE8 Ballista can be accounted more into the level design. An example would be to create a broken wall that limits enemy movement but allows players to use the moving ballista’s to their advantage. I do think having restricted ballista’s is still interesting, and being able to act after dismounting is a boon. But what really helps ballista’s in FE6 is how the mechanics of that game works and how differently FE6 can be comapred to FE7 and FE8.
I do agree with a lot of this however I also feel moving balista make long and killer versions almost untenable to implement, I also think the ways maps are limited by having to account for the moving balista is quite negative.
I also feel that challenges involving holding a point to retain the balista are harder to implement.
I have tried fe7 with a 3x effectiveness patch, and I felt balista where not changed much, typically I find balista aren’t even going to be hitting fliers mostly they are good for chip/support on threatening enemies, while this can include fliers it usually also includes units like mercs, cavs, and well any promoted enemy, there’s still little reason to use the balista as they limit movement too much [Balista can only move on plain terrain] and aren’t strong enough to justify use.
Most of the time a well placed long Balista would reach where you want anyway, as most of the time a balista can move 5 or 6 tiles at most, only if you have the room for that, a long balista will also perform better at your goals, and be easier to design around, as such I really don’t see the need to have the balista move, especially when it sacrifices simplicity, convenience and the long and killer balista variants.
A hackrom that makes use of player fe8 ballistas well is shackled power. The prepromote sniper Vicks can use them in his join map, maybe ch15, and he can even see viability in one of the endgame maps by shooting down fliers with the ballista in the map.
Oh, l thought this was gonna be about how cool FE6 was for having battle anims for ballistae, and how weird it was that FE7 redesigned them just to not use 'em.
But, you know what’s nice about FE6? You can actually see how many shots a ballista has left. l don’t see a way to tell in FE7. Kinda important, pretty odd thing to leave out.
I always assumed that IS could never get the palette to work properly.
This is because FE6 uses terrain tiles to place ballista the arrow count replaces the terrain information, FE6 also has you select the balista like a normal weapon so you can uses there.
I’ve looked more at the leftover ballista terrain tiles in FE8, it seems some part of the code that displays arrow count is leftover, however it is slightly broken, the amount displayed is 0 if no ballista is placed on the tile, however if a ballista is on the tile it will display as having 53 bolts left.
Long Balista tiles function much the same, however it displays the bolts left as 54
Killer Balista tiles function much the same too, however it displays the bolts left as 55
I tested mixing and matching tiles and balista types and fount that the bolts left display is tied to the type of ballista placed making me think the display was reading an ID of some kind, and I was right, the bolts left displays the Item ID [converted from hex to regular numerical] of the balista weapon that is placed on the terrain, for example if a killer ballista is placed on a long ballista terrain tile it will display 55 uses, until the ballista moves and fires[I’m unsure if it needs to fire or not] at which point the display resets to 0.
One final note is that Moving Ballista can not move on Ballista terrain tiles.
The fact it there is some left over, semi functional data makes me think it may be possible to repair the code and make FE6 ballista an option for FE8 hacks, or at least make the terrain tile display the number of bolts left properly which would be a nice feature to include.
This may also be easier then altering movement data of moving ballista.
If fully restored it’s possible hacks could implement both types of Ballista.
However I don’t know enough about code/ASM to say for sure, if someone does I’d like to hear their thoughts on this.